A head-cocked-to-the-side view of gaming from a hobby game veteran. Everything from Virtual Worlds to throwing rocks.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Yoville

Yoville is one of two facebook virtual worlds I've started playing this week. It stands out in a few ways, and doesn't stand out in a few others.

Stand out features:

Runs straight out of Facebook. As somebody who's on Facebook daily, that's nice.

No chat filter at all. You can debate the value of this, but it's nice to just say F*** every now and then.

Money -> Food -> Energy -> Dancing. It's all tied together in simple, fun little bow. Other things you can do with money:

Get drunk. It's hilarious. Drunk avatars sway from side to side. While drunk the entire screen is blurry. If you're really drunk, it's too blurry to read the chat text. The effect is quite temporary.

Buy coffee. You avatar moves faster. More coffee = more speed. Also temporary

The usual new clothes, new furniture.

Events. Players can label events and (I think) put restrictions on who may attend. Girls only, for example. There's always a huge list, thanks to the Facebook bump of players, I'd guess.

Money options

Job - show up once per day and get money

Casino - Just a slot machine for now. I've doubled my money with it, so I like it.

Play simple one-on-one games with other players. Tick-Tac-Toe and Rock Paper Scissors are the choices. Meh.

Buy fake money with real money. I'm tempted to drop $20 so I can have a tricked out place. We'll see. If I'm still playing it in a week I may take the plunge.

I am so0 wasted (13% drunk)

Less than stand out issues:

Not too many games to play. Tic-Tac-Toe doesn't quite cut it. If I wasn't winning with the slot machine, I'd never go back.

Avatars look stupid. Little body/huge head design. Combined with the fully open chat,booze, gambling, and a lot of adult themed parties, it creates a weird toddlers-cruising-for-action vibe, that I find off-putting.

Ho-Hum choice of features, so far. Aside from the booze, coffee, and the ability to say f***, it's very vanilla. If they expand it rapidly, I see a lot of potential, though.

Smallworlds has only just recently launched on Facebook, and ourWorld will soon follow. I really like Smallworlds, and they do a lot of things right.

To check out Facebook's Smallworld app (which worked fine) I reloaded my old character. I was disappointed to discover the sunglasses I already had we now "member's only" and I couldn't wear them any more. *sigh*